Distorted Reflections
by TheFaceofaHero
Summary: Tracer can see things. Things that nobody else is capable of seeing. The Chronal Accelerator, combined with the results of the Slipstream Project, grants Tracer more than just the ability to time travel.


She was abnormal.

She didn't pride herself on that fact. Yet the fact of the matter was that she could do the impossible. Things nobody else in recorded history had ever accomplished. She, Lena Oxton, could time travel. Not with a little blue box or a flashy Dolorian, but with the harness firmly secured around her torso. It had its ups and downs, as with anything. She held a one-of-a-kind advantage in battle, but she could never pry it off and go out without being instantly recognised because of the glowing cyan core on her chest. The Chronal Accelerator was as permanent as her flesh.

She wasn't invincible because of the gizmo, either. She suffered burns, cuts and gunshot wounds like the rest of her team. Mercy's exasperated face was something permanently burned into Lena's memory, from the numerous occassions she had to get patched up or put back together by the Swiss angel. And another thing: she could time travel, but she couldn't time travel far in either direction. Three second reversal. It didn't seem like a lot at first. She got very good at taking advantage of those precious three seconds, though.

Screwed up in a fight? Time reversal. Forgot the jacket walking out the door? Time reversal. Wanted to take one for the team? Time reversal. The Chronal Accelerator made Lena more conscious of what little time she really did have. The human brain experiences the illusion that time is progressing faster when certain chemicals are released. For Lena, that was constant. One of the side effects of the botched Slipstream Project she had volunteered for. The Accelerator only affected Lena when it worked its magic. It could only manipulate her own time, while the world around her kept going forward.

There were other ways in which the Slipstream Project left its mark on Lena. Without the harness, she would be a ghost. Flashing in and out, never staying for long. It was one of her worst memories. She hadn't even been sure if she was real or not. Luckily her ol' pal Winston, always one for finding a solution, found one. He'd managed to anchor her to their reality while doing rigorous researching and testing to develop the Accelerator. She was forever grateful for that.

Another side effect was that she could look into other realities. Not look, per se, but view manifestations that show her what could have been. The first instance she'd done it, she had been more than a little freaked out. She saw Commander Reyes as this thing of curling black smoke, wearing tattered and torn leather, with an owl mask over his face. She'd never mentioned it to anyone. Years later, going up against the Talon agent known as Reaper, she had pinned down his identity after seeing a phantom-like image of the Blackwatch leader hovering over Reaper's shoulder. Had that been a glimpse of the future? She hadn't a clue.

But it didn't stop there. Other manifestations came up. Widowmaker's identity wasn't such a big mystery anymore after Lena witnessed the spectre of the woman standing with her husband, smiling happily at her. Her heart throbbed painfully whenever she thought about Widowmaker, about Amélie, about Gerard. What could've been. Sometimes, she even saw herself with Widowmaker, with Amélie, kissing her, marrying her, being her saviour in more ways than one. Hot shame pulsed inside of her. Was the universe seriously trying to tell her that her crush was ridiculous? She kept that to herself. Otherwise she'd never live down the embarassment.

Jack Morrison didn't have long to hide from Lena. Even of it weren't for his familiar battle tactics or combat techniques, she recognized him as the former Strike Commander when she saw an illusion of a broad-shouldered blonde in combat gear leading Overwatch into its third decade. The temporal image had absolutely stunned her. Never mind that Commander Morrison had faked his death.

She'd seen Omnics living side-by-side with humans all across the globe. She'd seen Mondatta's assassination prevented. She'd seen an apocalypse that put the national disaster that was Australia to shame, with herself and only a few other survivors fighting for scraps. She couldn't physically interact with the temporal manisfestations, only watch. In some ways that was more painful than seeing the alternate realities.

Sometimes they plagued her in dreams. Simultaneously so vivid and surreal. She'd wake up in a cold sweat after being taken apart by Talon for her Accelerator, or seeing Zenyatta as a human, or Mercy betraying Overwatch and going over to Talon.

Were they supposed to be messages? Warnings? She hadn't the faintest idea. She confided in Winston about the temporal images, and he nodded sagely, listening to her carefully. He offered to make them go away, but she declined. She was just too fascinated by the possibilities. Possibilities that others experienced in their timelines, but never her own. What her counterparts experienced, apart from glimpses of herself with Amélie, and that one vision of the apocalypse. It was peculiar. She could see a thousand different Jack Morrisons, Gabriel Reyes, Zenyattas, Genjis, Hanzos, and so on, but not herself.

There was no exact science behind her 'visions'. Winston, the only one closest to being an expert, was baffled, and intrigued. She told him that she couldn't control when the opportunity to view a temporal image appeared. It just did. And she could stare right into it, or focus on whatever she was doing at the time instead. More often than not, it was very distracting. In a fight, that cost her. One moment she had Widowmaker on the ropes, the next she's seeing Amélie, pale skin and emerald eyes, leaning in to peck Gerard on the cheek. It threw Lena off.

That was merely one of the battles where she lost because of a temporal image popping up in front of her. She was improving, though. The trick was not to get immersed in what was being shown, and she'd taken classes from Genji and his mentor on how to deeply concentrate during a battle and be aware of her surroundings _and_ not be distracted by 'tricks of the light', as Zenny put it, much to her annoyance.

Life was becoming a series of hypotheticals and alternatives for Lena. The specialised combat lessons were the first step in grounding the Englishwoman on the path of reality, and for her to not get sweeped up in fantasies of a questionable origin.


End file.
